Infrastructure

While the $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is widely seen as beneficial for commercial real estate, one provision would eliminate a municipal financing tool that has been essential for housing, infrastructure, and industrial development investment for decades.

NBA champion and dedicated urban developer Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. is targeting a new prize—infrastructure. “If you look at infrastructure in America, it’s old,” he told the audience at the 2017 ULI Fall Meeting.

As Nashville prepares to turn its vision for a $6 billion regional transit plan into reality, the public and private sectors are exploring how transit can address other economic issues. ULI Nasvhille hosted a panel discussion on the opportunity for developers.

The evolution of “smart” cities is about solving specific problems more than sweeping urban transformation, panelists emphasized during the 2017 ULI Spring Meeting. Targeted programs with clear benefits are defining smart cities, not the widespread embrace of new technology, they said. In Seattle, “smart” means expanding the network of low-cost sensors, which is allowing for adaptive traffic signals and detailed weather mapping that can track microclimates and rain surges.

Amid speculation about the ways autonomous vehicles may upend current ways of living—and require fundamental changes to the way real estate and critical transportation-related infrastructure are
developed—voters in Washington state’s Puget Sound region approved tax increases in November to fund a $53.8 billion, 25-year program for expanding light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit.

“The story of people can be told through infrastructure,” said author Ryan Gravel at the 2017 Carolinas Meeting in Charlotte. An urban planner by training, Gravel initially proposed the concept of the BeltLine in his Georgia Tech master’s thesis.

ULI Minnesota has launched the Healthy Communities Initiative, which proposes an ambitious capital improvement program for turning proposed freeway lids along the I-94 corridor into places that re-establish neighborhood connectivity, create economic opportunities for residents, and make new land available for civic and commercial uses.

When Sound Transit completes its third phase of expansion in 2041, Greater Seattle will be a region transformed. The $54 billion Sound Transit 3 (ST3) package, approved by voters in November, will bring a total of 116 miles (187 km) of light rail connecting 80 stations in Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, and surrounding suburbs, plus bus rapid transit and more to serve a rapidly growing population. In March, ULI Northwest hosted a panel discussion of development experts focusing on what this transit investment will mean for the region.